Interactive systems connected wide area networks, such as the Internet, have steadily evolved into vibrant mediums for social interaction and distribution of media and other content. Indeed, an enormous amount of digital media generated by end users, media companies, and professional media creators is made available and shared across the Internet through web sites and uploading to various content hosting or aggregation systems and services (e.g., Flickr®, Yahoo!® Video, YouTube.com, etc.). End-users increasingly use or share media in a variety of on-line and interactive contexts. For example, an ever-increasing number of end-users create websites of various types, including blog pages, personalized social networking pages (such as Yahoo! 360, Facebook, or MySpace), that utilize digital media content, such as images, video, and music.
Today, most people who blog, podcast, write open source software and make available other useful content and intellectual property over a computer network to the community do not get paid enough from these endeavors in order to spend the maximum amount of their time on them. In other words, these people need to maintain a day job or have other income sources in order to pursue their creative passions. While there are marketplaces in existence today which allow for the sale and exchange of electronic goods and services, there are no network marketplaces or commerce models that facilitate commerce in social media contexts.